Webmaster's note: According
to Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, Second Series,
Vol. V, p. 139, "there is, in all probability, no
connection between this family (Floyer of Shinfield) and
the Floyers of Devonshire and Dorsetshire. They
bore the same arms, but in an early Visitation of
Staffordshire their right is disputed, and no proof was
forthcoming. They had a confirmation of them in a
later Visitation, but this was most likely given because
they had by that time borne them for two or three
generations. The name was invariably spelt Flyer
and Flyar from their earliest record (middle of the
sixteenth century), and this spelling was continued in
the elder branch until at all events 1723, and in the
present and younger branch until the end of the
seventeenth century. The Devonshire Floyers never
spelt it this way. Several genealogists have made
the mistake of connecting the two families without
sufficiently examining the evidence".

This account of the life and times
of Dr. Sir John Floyer by Denis Gibbs is included here
because Sir John was a medical pioneer and a fascinating
individual in his own right. Questions often arise
concerning Sir John's relationship to the Floyers of
Floyers Hayes, so this discussion is an attempt to set
the record straight.

The line drawing of Sir John
depicted to the right is probably based on an original
oil painting that hung in a house in Staffordshire until
it disappeared sometime in the early 1800's. It is
not known what became of the painting, but it may be
stored in someone's attic, or hanging in a living room,
just an old painting of an unknown gentleman. If
anyone viewing this site has any information regarding
the whereabouts of this painting, please contact the
webmaster.

Sir John Floyer has been
described as "fantastic, whimsical, pretentious,
research-minded, and nebulous" (Lindsay,
1951). It is true that he would now he regarded as
eccentric. But he lived in an age of change and
turbulence, in which some display of eccentricity was
normal among those with intellectual interests.
Floyer lived at the height of the so-called
"scientific revolution," which overturned the
authority in science not only of the Middle Ages but of
the ancient world. He stood at the very crossroads
between mediaeval traditionalism in medicine founded on
the teachings of Galen, which had served for a
millennium, and the application of the new experimental
approach to science.

Floyer was not a mere
observer; he was also an active participant in the new
learning. Though he had great respect for
traditional authority and was still a practitioner of
Galenic medicine, he became a pioneer in several fields
of medical endeavour. His contributions have seldom
been accorded due recognition by medical
historians.

Biographical
Notes

The bare biographical
details of Floyer's life do not take long to
relate. He was a true native of this
district. He was the third child and second son of
Elizabeth Babington and Richard Floyer, of Hints
Hall. Hints is a quiet village lying a short
distance from Watling Street, a few miles southwest of
Tamworth. In the church register at Hints there is
an alteration after the entry of John's name, from 25
April to 3 March 1649. There are more interesting
alterations to entries referring to other individuals in
the Floyer family. When the name of John's
grandfather, Ralph, appears the word "gent" has
been added, and when the death of his own father,
Richard, was recorded the description "Lord of the
Manor of Hints" was later appended. Such was
the birth of the upper middle class.

The Floyers, or Fliers, the
name meaning arrow maker, were an ancient Saxon family,
and held lands in Devon before 1066. In the
sixteenth century a younger son, possibly turned out in
disgrace by the Devon Floyers, settled in Uttoxeter and
started trade there as a mercer. The business
prospered, and with the profits his son acquired a
handsome estate. The grandson of the migrant
Floyer, who was himself the grandfather of John, bought
the Manor House, Hints Hall, in 1601. Here the
family adopted the style of gentry and the arms of the
Floyer family. Floyers continued to live at Hints
until the last century.

John Floyer as a younger son
was obliged to choose a profession, and at the age of 15
he matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford, to read
medicine. Before this one presumes that he was
privately tutored; he is not mentioned in the list of
scholars of Lichfield Grammar School. He graduated
B.A. in 1668, MB. in 1674, and M.D. in 1686. This
long university training would, of course, have consisted
in reading the classics, memorizing the aphorisms of
Hippocrates, attending lectures and a few dissections,
and writing theses and defending them in
disputations.

Floyer returned to Lichfield
in about 1680, and soon became a very prominent member of
the community. In 1686 he was elected a justice of
the peace for life; later he was elected bailiff.
The circumstances of his knighthood are shrouded in
uncertainty. He was probably knighted by James II, in
whose political intrigues he is usually presumed to have
participated. Since he was only on the threshold of
his medical career, the honour of knighthood is thought
to have been conferred for political rather than medical
activities. When James II visited Lichfield in 1686
Sir John was a member of the party that met him on the
outskirts of the city. But if Floyer was concerned in the
intrigues of the time, his local reputation does not seem
to have suffered in any way.

Whatever the high offices he
occupied in local affairs, and however close his
association was with royalty, it is for his medical work
that he deserves recognition. During a long
professional lifetime he lived and practised medicine in
Lichfield, and here he wrote his many books.
Contemporary information from others about Sir John's
professional life and work is tantalizingly scanty.
Fortunately his own medical books tell us something of
his life as well as providing extensive commentaries on
contemporary medical practice.

I have
mentioned that the curriculum for the study of medicine
at Oxford in the 1660's was unexciting and inadequate, to
say the least. Thomas Sydenham, who was a medical
student a few years before John Floyer said that
"one had as good send a man to Oxford to learn
shoemaking as practising physick" (Dewhurst,
1966). But Floyer's residence there coincided with
a period of remarkable intellectual activity, seldom
equalled at any university in any period. Referring
to the period of the Restoration, it has been said that
"the day was drawing to a close when men could take
all knowledge for their province; but the sun set in
splendour" (Gunn, 1936). His youthful
curiosity would have been stimulated by such intellects
in science as Robert Boyle, John Locke, and John
Mayow. Much was happening "to infuse life into
the dry bones of Hippocrates and Galen" (Gunn,
1936). The physical surroundings of Oxford were
themselves exciting. John Floyer's three undergraduate
years coincided with the building of the Sheldonian
Theatre, the first important architectural commission of
Christopher Wren, then aged 31.

Floyer's medical writings
give abundant evidence both of his own insatiable
curiosity and of his passion for experiment. His
first book, The Touchstone of Medicines, was
published in 1687, his declared purpose being to classify
medicines for their usefulness in different disorders,
according to their various tastes and smell. He did
not rely entirely on his own judgement, for he says he
was "obliged to divers divines, apothecaries,
chyrurgeons, gentlewomen and young persons who have been
my patients; whose judgement, as Galen says, is uncorrupt
and unprejudiced." He goes on, "I must
needs acknowledge that the palates of women are more
critical than men's, who generally dull it by
intemperance and tobacco." He takes to task
some physicians "who cause their patients to swallow
what they dare not taste themselves," and says,
"I cannot believe I have received any prejudice by
tasting - though I have often blistered my mouth and
disordered my stomach."

In 1697 appeared An
Enquiry into the Right Use and Abuses of the Hot, Cold
and Temperate Baths in England, known in later
editions as The History of Cold Bathing.
From his convictions, amounting almost to an obsession,
concerning the value of cold bathing he was able to
persuade "worthy and obliging gentlemen" to
contribute towards erecting a cold bath at
Lichfield. In fact two baths were built, an upper
ladies' bath and lower men's bath, both fed by the very
cold spring water at Abnalls, a mile or so outside the
city. By thermometer readings he had previously
checked that this spring water was the coldest of any in
the district. He did not underestimate the human
frailties of his patients when he said: "Physicians
oft find it a difficult task to conquer the aversions of
nice patients and to persuade them to use those medicines
to which they have not been accustomed, until they have
first convinced them that their medicines are both safe
and necessary. I expect to find the same aversion
to cold bathing."

Patients who were not
seriously ill probably felt invigorated after a cold
bath; others may have claimed an improvement lest Sir
John persisted with further courses of treatment.
Many contemporaries soon recognized that Floyer was
pressing his claims for the beneficial effects of his
hydrotherapy too hard.

He records that
he was insulted by the ridicule of many learned men. The
Tatler in 1709 published a scathing satire on the
subject of cold bathing. There is even a fatality
recorded by a diarist (Bodleian Library, 1720), who wrote
of a deceased clerical friend: "His death was
chiefly owing to an infirmity caused by his throwing
himself, about midnight in winter time, into the river,
upon reading Sir John Floyer of Cold Baths."

The next book written by
Floyer, A Treatise of the Asthma, appeared in 1698
only a year after the controversial publication on
bathing. This has stood the test of time better
than any of his other writings, and should be regarded as
a classical work on the subject. Floyer had good
reason to be an expert on bronchial asthma, for he was a
life-long sufferer himself. He did not neglect the
opportunity of making detailed observations on his own
symptoms and how they were influenced by environment and
seasons, as well as by treatment. He writes "I
cannot remember the first occasion of my asthma, but I
have been told that it was a cold when I first went to
school. As my asthma was not hereditary from my
ancestors, so I thank God neither of my two sons are
inclined to it, who are now past the age when it seized
me... I never had any considerable fit in Oxford for
twelve years that I lived there. But, as oft as I
came into Staffordshire, into my native air, I was
usually visited with a severe fit or two."
Nevertheless he is able to remain optimistic about his
own condition: "I have met with some
asthmatics who have been so for fifty years, as they
informed me, and yet in tolerable health without any
considerable decay of their lungs... which I oft reflect
on to encourage my patients and myself, who yet can
study, walk, ride and follow my employment, eat, drink
and sleep, as well as ever I could."

There is no doubt that at
times the asthma did interfere with his ordinary
life. In the preface of The Touchstone of
Medicines he mentions "the long and frequent
interruptions I have had by a country practice and ill
health." This book was published in two
volumes. From an advertisement inserted by the
publishers at the end of the first volume an excuse is
given for certain errata, the correction of which was not
possible because of the author's "late desperate
illness... in his recovery from which, [as] he himself
has reaped the benefit of his own art."

In advancing
our understanding of asthma Floyer made two special
contributions. He thought that spasmodic asthma was
in part due to constriction of the bronchi; and he gave
the first detailed description of emphysema from
dissection he performed on a broken-winded mare, relating
his findings to human disease. In his quest for a
better understanding of asthma he would dearly have liked
to prove that there was the human counterpart of
broken-winded horses. Unfortunately he was not able
to overcome the prejudices of the Lichfeldians of his
day. He wrote to a colleague in 1710: "If I
could have procurred (sic) the dissection of such persons
as have died of this disease in my neighbourhood, you
should have had that evidence too; but my countrymen are
averse to such practices, though designed for good.
But I must leave this part of this subject to the young
practicers in London, to look for the air-bladders in
asthmatics."

However original and
important were the observations on asthma made by Floyer,
they of course contributed nothing to effective
therapy. When Dr. Samuel Johnson was aged 75 and
Floyer had been dead some 40 years, Dr. Johnson borrowed
a copy of A Treatise of the Asthma from the
library of Lichfield Cathedral in the hope that he might
learn something to afford help in his own
suffering. He wrote to a medical friend: "I am
now looking into Floyer, who lived with asthma to almost
his ninetieth year. His book by want of order is
obscure; and his asthma, I think, not of the same kind
with mine. Something however I may perhaps
learn." (Boswell, 1791.)

It is worth mentioning that
neither did the first professional contact with Sir John
Floyer at the other extreme of Samuel Johnson's life
result in a therapeutic triumph. It was on Floyer's
advice that the infant Samuel with scrofula was taken by
his mother to receive the Royal Touch of Queen Anne at
Westminster. In Johnson's case abscesses and
ulceration followed and left extensive scarring.

Floyer had his
fifty-ninth birthday in the year that Samuel Johnson was
born, so that he belongs to an earlier generation - to
the Lichfield of Johnson's father, the bookseller Michael
Johnson. John Floyer and Samuel's father would have
met on frequent occasions. Michael Johnson
published the first books that Floyer wrote; they were
churchwardens of neighbouring parishes; and they both
held office in important posts in the local government of
Lichfield. Along with those of many contributors,
both names appear in a list of subscribers to an appeal
by the Dean and Chapter for money to recast the cathedral
bells damaged in the disturbances of the Civil War.
John Floyer gave £1 1s. 6d. and Michael Johnson l0s.,
each a respectable sum, particularly when neither
benefactor had long been established in his profession or
trade (Harwood, 1806).

At about the same time as
the Johnson family were consulting Sir John about their
ailing infant Samuel his next book was published.
Since writing A Treatise of the Asthma
Floyer's energies had not diminished, and in 1707 and
1710 were published the two volumes of The Physician's
Pulse Watch, together amounting to over a thousand
pages of observations, commentaries, charts, and tables
relating to the pulse, the first volume of the massive
work being dedicated to Queen Anne. It is
impossible to summarize this work adequately. Amid
exhaustive references to his favourite ancient authors
and his fascination with Chinese medicine, accounts of
which had recently been brought back by missionaries,
important original research is recorded. The
significance of the work is his insistence on the value
of accurate measurement of pulse rates, so that, as he
says, "We may know the natural pulse and the
excesses and defects from this in diseases."

Floyer was the first
physician to time the pulse in his routine clinical
practice, and he records scores of observations in which
he tried to establish relationships between pulse rates
and many other measurements, such as respiration rate,
temperature, barometric readings, age, sex, and season,
and even the latitude where the readings were
taken. To begin with, for his timing device he used
either the minute hand of a pendulum clock or a sea
minute glass. He then asked Samuel Watson, a watch
and clock maker who started his career in Coventry and
then moved to Long Acre in London, to adapt a watch for
the purpose of timing the pulse. The physician's
pulse watch incorporated a second hand and also a special
lever by means of which the mechanism could be
stopped. Both these devices were horological
innovations. Floyer used this watch as a precision
instrument for clinical measurement, checking that it
remained accurate by comparing it with the minute glass
which he kept at home as his standard.

Many other experimental
observations were recorded by Floyer in addition to his
pulse counting, and a few examples may be given. He
made very accurate calculations on the ratio between
blood and body weight. In another experiment, by
using the ileum of a cow and a handpump, he constructed a
model to imitate the pulse and circulation. He
demonstrated, to use his own words, that "The force
of the water injected protruded the gut, and the annular
fibres, by their natural restitution, promoted the motion
of the water and kept the stream from any interruption,
though the injection was made by intervals" (Floyer,
1707)

Sanctorius, the
celebrated Paduan professor of medicine, who lived from
156l to 1636, had an important influence on Floyer. Among
the books that Floyer bequeathed to Queen's College was Ars
de statica medicina, in which Sanctorius described
his metabolic balance experiments and the discovery of
insensible perspiration. Floyer must have copied
the weighing machine and used it in Lichfield, for he
reports on the weighing of an asthmatic, as he says,
"after Sanctorius's manner." He describes
the subject of his observations as an asthmatic, between
40 and 50 years old, and the dates when the studies were
made are given as 3-6 May 1698 (Floyer, 1726).
There can be little doubt that he himself was the subject
for these experiments.

For the next twenty years
after his books on the pulse he continued to write, but
he turned his thoughts from medicine to the realms of
history, philosophy, metaphysics, and theology. The
further he travelled from observations on his patients to
ethereal speculations and prophesies, the more obscure he
became.

But he still had a
contribution of importance to make, and once again he
broke new ground. In his own twilight years he
wrote the first book on geriatrics. Medicina
Gerocomica, sub-titled the Galenic Art of
Preserving Old Men's Healths, was published in
l724. As the author of this treatise perhaps he
should be regarded as the father of geriatrics. His
earlier works had been dedicated in elaborate style
either to the highest in the land, not excepting Queen
Anne herself, the Dukes of Marlborough and Devonshire,
and Lord Dartmouth, or to fellow physicians, such as Dr.
Phineas Fowke, of Little Wyrley, or Dr. Gibbons, of
Wolverhampton. Medicina Gerocomica, alone among
his medical books, was given no dedication.

Should we assume that he
could no longer call on noble patronage or that he had
outlived his medical and scientific friends? It may
be fairer to suggest that that he had retired from the
arena of medical controversy, and that he wrote his small
book on preserving old men's health for his own
satisfaction.

He begins his preface by
saying that "every man is a fool or becomes a
physician, when he arrives at 40 or 50 years of
age." Much of the book amounts to advocacy of a
common-sense approach for preservation of the ageing
body, with attention to fresh air, exercise, regular
diet, and temperance in all things, especially alcohol
and tobacco. When discussing the treatment of
certain forms of ulceration he mentions that "rest
and sleep and serenity of mind procure the sooner
healing." He relaxes his spartan standards now
that he is 74 himself and accepts that, instead of cold
baths, hot water does sometimes have advantages.

Throughout his life Sir John
had stressed the importance of physical exercise in
promoting health. In Medicina Gerocomica,
after giving a long list of activities that he thought
too strenuous for old men, he mentions that "these
are gentle exercises, sailing, pruning trees, riding,
bowling, billiards, ninepins, fishing,
walking." The old men that were able to follow
his advice must have enjoyed their declining years.

We are given
brief glimpses by others of Sir John himself in his old
age. Dr. Johnson mentions that he panted on till 90
(Boswell, 1791). For some reason Floyer was
curiously sensitive about his age. Dr. Johnson
recalls that "he was not much less than eighty, when
to a man of rank who modestly asked his age, he answered,
'Go look'; though he was in general a man of civility and
elegance" (Boswell, 1791). Those who cite his
age incorrectly may therefore be excused. In fact,
he died when he was in his eighty-fifth year, and his
burial is recorded at Lichfield Cathedral. That he
provided his own best advertisement for his
recommendations on preserving the health of old men is
suggested in a letter written by Bishop Hough of
Worcester. "Sir John Floyer has been with me
some weeks, and all my neighbours are surprised to see a
man of eighty-five [in reality he was eighty-two] who has
all his memory, understanding and all his senses good,
and seems to labour under no infirmity." He
continues this letter with some gossip: "He had a
wife, who, I believe you may have heard, was not the most
easy, or the most discreet; but he is of a happy temper,
not to be moved by what he cannot remedy, which I really
believe has in a great measure helped to preserve his
health and prolong his days" (Wilmot, 1812)

How can one summarize the
complicated personality of Sir John Floyer? Is it
fair, as one commentator has it, to say that "he
mounted his twin hobby-horses - the pulse and the bath -
and rode onwards, looking neither to right nor left, as
he passed through the muddy lanes of early
eighteenth-century Staffordshire" (Smerdon,
1965)? Was he really so whimsical, obstinate, and
tortuous, and something of a "character," as
has been suggested? Neither the description of him
by Dr. Johnson as "a man of civility and
elegance" nor Bishop Hough's account suggests that
such traits were excessively manifest. He was
unquestionably a physician of remarkable energy,
curiosity, and intellect, with a fascination for
experimental investigation. He was admittedly
gullible, and his enthusiasms sometimes obscured his
judgement. But we should not underestimate a man
who paved the way for the application of measurement to
clinical medicine, gave the first detailed description of
emphysema, and wrote the first book on medical aspects of
old age. If the span of centuries could be bridged
he would doubtless be a frequent contributor to these
meetings. His achievements set no mean standard for
those that are working in this new hospital to strive
after, even if separated in time by some ten
generations.

The
portrait of Sir John Floyer is reproduced by kind
permission of the Keeper of Western Manuscripts, Bodleian
Library, Oxford (Shelfmark G. A. Staffs 40, 8).

1
Communication to the Autumn Meeting of the West Midlands
Physicians' Association held at Good Hope General
Hospital, Sutton Coldfield, on 2 November 1968.2
Consultant Physician, Good Hope General Hospital, Sutton
Coldfield, Warwickshire.

Denis Gibbs, BA, DM, FRCP,
an Oxford-educated gastroenterologist and medical
historian, has served several decades as a consulting
physician at The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel,
having previously served the North Birmingham Hospitals.
In addition to an extensive career in gastroenterology, a
practice that previously brought him to America as a
Fellow in Boston, Gibbs has devoted innumerable hours
around the globe with many medical colleagues advocating
the study of medicine's lengthy and important heritage.
He has written extensively on the history of his own
specialty, various medical eponyms and disease entities,
as well as on a number of key figures known by people in
many walks of life including Baron Munchausen and Sir
Frederick Treves. His medical history forays have
resulted in a number of official appointments including
presidency of the History of Medicine Section of the
Royal Society of Medicine (London), Apothecaries Lecturer
in the History of Medicine (The Worshipful Society of
Apothecaries, London), and the position which he
currently holds, President of the British Society of the
History of Medicine. Early in his medical career, Gibbs
was based in Lichfield, England, a city in England's West
Midlands County of Staffordshire known for its
association with luminaries in literature,
industrialization and medicine. Notable among these
individuals were essayist and dictionary author Samuel
Johnson, potter Josiah Wedgewood, polymath Erasmus
Darwin, physician William Withering, educator and chemist
Joseph Priestley, and engineers James Watt and Matthew
Boulton.